GLENN LONEY'S MUSEUM NOTES

CONTENTS, January 2005

Please click on "
* " to skip to each subject in this index:

Caricature of Glenn Loney by Sam Norkin.

At the New, Improved Museum of Modern Art: *
At The Noguchi Museum—Way Out in Queens: Noguchi and Graham: Selected Works
for Dance *
At the Whitney Museum of American Art: James Lee Byars: The Perfect Silence *
Bill Viola: Five Angels for the Millennium *
Renzo Piano Designs the New, Improved Whitney *
At the Frick Collection: Raphael's La Fornarina *
At the Bard Graduate Center: The Castellani and Italian Archeological Jewelry *
At the New York Public Library: James Gillray *
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art: WILD: Fashion Untamed *
$45 Million "Stroganoff Madonna" on View *

At the New, Improved Museum of Modern Art:

[Open until further notice!]

For some months, it was an adventure—fun, even—to trek out
to Darkest Queens and the old Swingline Stapler Factory to admire the
provocative shows MoMA's adventurous curators had installed there while its
true home on West 53rd Street was undergoing an attack of Gigantism.

The newly re-opened midtown MoMA HQ is nothing if not
Big. This proves a mixed blessing. The truly remarkable paintings and
sculptures from its PermanentCollections—many not often on
view in the two previous versions of MoMA—now have grand white spaces around
them so they can be savored and studied without competition from too-closely-hung
or set equally strong Masterpieces. This is a wonderful Holiday
Gift that will keep right on giving—although admission prices have skyrocketed.

Facts & Figures: MoMA's press-releases point
out that the total exhibition-space has increased from 85,000 to 125,000 square
feet. On six floors! The PR info describes this as nearly doubling
the show-space, but Do The Math: Doubling would have provided 170,000
square feet.

Had that space-increase been achieved, MoMA curators would
have been hard-put to find enough new works worthy of public display to fill
such vast white voids. That is part of the Mixed Blessing, as noted
by several critics: Much Contemporary Art looks nakedly exposed in
the new galleries, compared with the majestic timeless authority of Picassos,
Matisses, & Giacomettis.

This is the age-old problem of both Museums & Libraries:
people will not stop trying to produce Works of Art,
nor will scribblers stop writing books and poems.

When the Lincoln Center Library of the Performing Arts
was constructed—as a kind of Square Concrete Doughnut around the Vivian
Beaumont Theatre-Complex—the architects left no easy possibility for expansion.
As if Arthur Miller would stop writing plays, Willa Kim stop
making costume-plates, and BrooksAtkinson stop writing reviews:
Atkinson, at least, has passed over into Immortality and has sent no reviews
Back from the Beyond.

It may seem difficult to imagine that some of the works being
shown at the WhitneyBiennale—and, later, at MoMA—will pass
over, in time, into the kind of Immortality now accorded Matisse and Picasso.
But as American Culture, Taste, & Morals continue to be debased,
today's scandals may well be Tomorrow's Classics.

There is also that annoying question: Where Does Modern
Begin? In Paris, at the Musée d'Orsay, what's Modern
at MoMA now looks Historic on the Seine.

Much has been made of the vast new MoMA Atrium, the
ingenious innovation of Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi. It is
truly overwhelming, and it provides a kind of Light-Well to flood the
museum with Natural—and some un-Natural—Light. The architectural vistas which
it makes possible for photographers—including long windows, staircases, and
elevated walkways—are breathtaking.

Barnett Newman's rusty iron Broken Obelisk
which dominates this space seems to have been created with that function in
mind. Unfortunately, Monet's Water-Lilies, splayed out on a
concrete wall low down in the atrium-tower, reads like almost nothing: not
even Wall-Decoration…

Every Department—and Aspect—of Modern Art now has its own
spaces—and, one hopes, offices, as well. Film, Prints, Books, Video-Arts—you
name it, All Are Here!

The new—or made-over—MoMA premises cost some $450 million.
That is only ten times the cost of that tiny Duccio the Met Museum
just bought. Just think what the Met could have added to its exhibition-spaces
with $45 million!

And that is another problem about Modern Museums.
New Art Expands To Fit The Space Available. Another form of the Peter
Principle… Or is that Murphy's Law?

When MoMA had its last expansion, one hoped a new long-gallery
would be used to show some of the masterpieces usually hidden in storage.
No Way! Artists like Frank Stella rushed into the breach with long, long canvases
to fill the Empty Spaces. These Extended Artworks—some new ones
are now on view in the vast upper reaches of the new MoMA—often have nothing
much to say visually after the first ten linear feet or so. Unless Endless
Extension of Patterns or Similar Images is an art in itself…

It has been reported that Taniguchi was not pleased with the
ways in which the contractors finished his designs. Perhaps they were too
rushed? Or too far Over-Budget? Whatever the reason, some wall-surfaces and
hallways are uneven or not well finished. This is unfortunate.

Isamu Noguchi's very own Museum—with a small Sculpture Garden—has
been closed for renovations since 2001. Now re-opened, it is currently featuring
a fascinating and impressive exhibition of the costumes, props, and set-pieces
the sculptor created for major Martha Graham choreographies.

These two major artists and great friends collaborated in
a wonderful way that increased the visual and spiritual powers of both the
Sculpture and the Dance.

Not only are the Noguchi/Graham objects and costumes artfully
deployed in the former photo-gravure factory's upper galleries, but Curator
Bonnie Rychlak has also provided wall schemas of the actual on-stage placement
and function of the materials.

Although the Museum has a Permanent Collection of Noguchi
Sculptures—not all on view at any one time—the Graham show is a one-time-only
opportunity, as these beautiful and unusual objects are on loan from the Martha
Graham Foundation. They do not belong to the Noguchi Museum!

Featured are nine of the nineteen dance-settings Noguchi created
for Martha Graham. Among them: Acrobats of God, Phaedra, Judith, Nigh
Journey, Dark Meadow, & Embattled Garden. Of course there are
videos of the actual works in performance, showing how Graham's dancers interacted
with sets, props, and costumes.

The Museum is sited at 32-37 Vernon Boulevard: not
easily accessible by MTA, but you could take the Roosevelt Island
cable-car from East 59th Street, then take the Island bus for a small fee,
and walk across the elevator-bridge to Mainland Queens, and then walk
some blocks up to Vernon.

There are some great Industrial Wasteland photo-shots
in this area, especially under the Manhattan-Queens 59th Street Bridge.
I made the mistake of stopping to photograph the towering smokestacks of the
great power-plant—as well as the bridge—only to be sharply questioned by passing
residents and then accosted by a Security Guard who demanded to see
my ID. John Ashcroft and George Bush have done their work well:
If You See Something Suspicious…

If the Taliban wanted to attack the plant, they already have
plenty of site-info, as a number of Hollywood films feature it in flyover-shots
of Manhattan.

If you want to see any of these Industrial Artifacts—or
the Noguchi Museum—from the comparative safety of the Public Sidewalks, there
is a weekend bus from the AsiaSociety on Park & 70th. Call
the Museum for more Info: 1718-204-7088. Noguchi masterpieces are also
currently on view at the Whitney Museum.

James Lee Byars died in Cairo in 1997, not the ideal
place for an artist's demise. But memories of his artistry live on at the
Whitney Museum. My favorite is a gold-leaf-covered box of a room—missing the
Fourth Wall—which contains a gold-leafed coffin-like box. This work is titled
The Death ofJames
Lee Byars.

When this installation/sculpture was initially shown in Brussels,
in 1994, Byars himself was IN it. He wore a gold-lamé suit and
black top-hat, lying on the floor, "Practicing Death," as he said. Marcel
Duchamp, Eat Your Heart Out!

The Curatorial Judgment on Byars' work is that it:
"…articulates a dualist aesthetic that embodies both the Zen and the baroque."

You will surely sense this when you regard The Little
Red Angel. On the Whitney gallery floor, neatly laid out in a baroque
flourish, as Byars had decreed, are no less than 333 hand-blown red glass
spheres!

If you think about the Mystical Significance of this
number, it is exactly half that of the Sign of the Beast
or Anti-Christ, which is 666, the Fifth Avenue number of the
Tishman Building!

No Little Red Angels for Bill Viola!
Instead, he videos five visions of a man plunging into a pool of water, or
variously hovering over it, emerging, or submerging. Like Byars, Viola has
been violated by Zen Perceptions. The MovingImages are
projected forward, backward, upside-down, or in slow-motion.

Curatorial Advice: These projectional quirks
are intended to disrupt "conventional readings of the image" and to "disorient
the viewer." As if the daily reports on the news of the latest sayings of
George W. Bush were not dis-orienting enough!

Viola's five video-loops are variously titled: Fire
Angel, Birth Angel, Creation Angel, Departing Angel, & Ascending Angel.
This artwork—and the tapes—are a three-way ownership deal involving the Whitney,
the Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in
Parigi.

Some of Viola's footage is arresting, with dramatic color-changes.
But, if you saw this on your own SONY at home, you'd call the TV repairman.

Michael Graves had the best visual & spatial concept
for expanding the Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue. But various quarrelsome
locals defeated his plan, eager to protect the shabby tenements which adjoin
the Marcel Breuer bulk of the museum, fiercely fought when it was first
proposed, as well.

Now, an attractive third plan is going forward, recently presented
to the press in models, drawings, and slides. This is RenzoPiano's
ingenious solution to the Whitney's on-going problems about space, mission,
and function. Piano is also responsible for the exponential expansion of the
Morgan Library, farther down Madison Avenue at 36th Street.

What is it with all this expansionism by Major
Museums, Collections, and Libraries? The Met, MoMA, the Morgan, the Noguchi,
the Whitney?

All that's now needed is for the NYPL on 42nd and 5th
to begin yet another internal expansion. The Astor, Tilden, & Lenox
Libraries were long ago combined to form this great Beaux Arts Monument,
on the site of an Egyptian-style Central City Reservoir. And Manhattan had
its own Crystal PalaceExhibition behind it—on what is now Bryant
Park!

At
the Frick Collection: Raphael's La Fornarina

[Closing January 30, 2005]

Raphael's La Fornarina
- "The Little Baker Girl."

The Frick Collection, with its magnificent Interiors
and remarkable Masterpieces, is always well worth a visit. Currently, it has
an Added Attraction: Raphael's LaFornarina—or
"The Little Baker Girl." This impressive nude portrait is on loan to the U,
S. for the first time ever from the Palazzo Barbarini in Rome, thanks
to the generosity of the National Museums of Rome and the Foundation for Italian
Art Culture.

Was this beautiful lady Raphael's Mistress? Did his
sexual infatuations lead to the fever that killed him—as Vasari alleged? In
any case, on her arm she wears a bracelet inscribed: RAPHAEL VRBINAS.

Curatorial Advice: Raphael's striking canvas
is: "One of the most famous and immediately identifiable paintings in the
canon of Western Art." This means, if you are studying Art History, you'd
be well advised to hurry to the Frick to imprint LaFornarina's
image on your brain for future slide-quizzes.

[Speaking about the Lenox Library—see above—it once
stood on Lenox Hill where the Frick Mansion now sedately sits.]

Also on loan from Italy—and museums & private collectors
worldwide, as well—are the remarkably intricate jeweled settings of necklaces,
brooches, earrings, buckles, bracelets, and pendants created by the Castellani
Family in the 19th century.

What distinguishes these magnificent adornments is not only
that they are each a work of art in itself, but that their designs were inspired
by the arts and adornments of Antiquity: Ancient Egypt, Greece, & Rome.
The Italian Renaissance was also a powerful influence on some of the
more elegant jewelry. Even Medieval Motifs moved the Castellanis to
make magic for women's beautification.

Quite aside from the obvious value of the gems and semi-precious
stones set in solid gold, silver, or colorfully enameled precious metals,
the designs and workmanship make these treasures truly priceless. Insurance
for this exhibition must have cost a small fortune!

Delicate yet powerful cameos vie with richly hued enamel images
and mosaics of tiny bits of colored glass to form the centerpieces of pendants,
pins, and necklaces. Although the Bard Center's townhouse on West 86th Street
is not large, its intimate galleries are currently crammed with these wonderful
objects. Do see this show!

James Gillray was the foremost political & cultural
commentator of his time—though he was not an author! He achieved
his effects largely with his boldly colored and grossly caricatured images
of the Royal Family, the Aristocracy, Parliament, Con-Men, Farmers, Shop-keepers,
& Layabouts.

Considering how outrageously distorted his images of the Royals
were, it's surprising and amusing that the Prince of Wales was an avid
collector of his brazen cartoons. In fact, as the current show on the third
floor of the NYPL on 42nd Street explains, his hand-colored engraved images
were pricey enough that only those with money could generally afford them.

In almost all of the Gillray cartoons currently shown in the
two corridors flanking the entrance to the Main Reading Room, detailed dialogues
are provided in burgeoning white balloons of conversation billowing from his
victims' mouths.

Indeed, if you are able to see this show, put aside an entire
morning or afternoon, for both the wall-texts—which explain the historical,
social, & political backgrounds of each image—and the cartoons themselves
offer hours of reading-material for amusement and reflection.

Many of the Library's Gillrays have never before been on view,
and this is the first time they have been shown as a Gillray retrospective,
rather than as images in a differently-themed exhibition.

In the 1950s, I was able to acquire some Gillrays in London's
Portobello Market. I even found ten copies—hand-colored—of a Gillray
cartoon which presented the backsides of various European types, showing how
Scots, Brits, French, and Germans, among others, relieved themselves. Scat,
in the extreme. So much so that I never mailed them back to the U. S. No need
to shock the Postmaster General!

Most of the Gillrays were initially collected by Governor
Samuel Tilden—once almost President of the United States, but defeated
by the Electoral College vote. His Tilden Foundation is one of the three pillars
of the New York Public Library: composed, as it is, of the Astor, Tilden,
& Lenox Foundations. Tilden's handsome Victorian Mansion on Gramercy
Park South—next to Edwin Booth's Players—is now home to the National
Arts Club.

All that was wanted to make the new Costume Show at the Met
complete would have been the presence—perhaps as Hostess or Guide?—of Mme;
Wildenstein, a famous lover of Lions, who had her plastic-surgeon re-configure
her face to present a Leonine Countenance to the world. Indeed, at
the time of her equally famous—or infamous—divorce squabbles with her art-gallery-scion
spouse, the Popular Press dubbed her The Bride of Wildenstein.

In this very unusual exhibition—which should have drawn squadrons
of PETAProtesters—a wide variety of wild-animal furs are displayed,
either as trims or the substance of some dazzling fashion creations. But this
show is not only about dead pelts; it is also about the Look of the Wild,
invoking avian & animal shapes, forms, symbols, or qualities in striking
clothes obviously designed to attract attention. Various animal and bird traits
are exemplified in some of the costumes as DefiningWoman. After
all, Primitive Man [and Woman] initially adorned himself in skins of
dead animals. Weaving was devised later. And, if Man was not intended to use
birds for sources of adornment as well, where did we get that phrase: A
Feather In His Cap?

But "Ethical Woman" is in part defined by Fake Furs!
That's a stretch, but curators do have to seek out varied themes. Otherwise,
it's just a lot of frocks on show.

The fashion-house of Roberto Cavalli was a major sponsor.
Other design-houses on view include Gucci, Dior, & Fendi, as well
as such designers as Jean-Paul Gaultier and Yohji Yamamoto.

What could you buy with $45,000,000? If you were Philippe
de Montebello and the Met Museum's Trustees, you could probably have added
a wing or two to this already vast museum. You could certainly have made the
museum Admission-Free for many, many years!

But, no. They have paid this immense sum for a very small
13th/14th century gilded wooden panel, not as large as a piece of typing-paper.

Don't worry about Museum Expansion: that is already
underway, and it's paid by a different fund entirely. Don't worry about Admission
Prices: they will continue to be charged. And they will certainly increase.
After all, MoMA is now charging $20 a head!

This staggering sum for a small piece of wood has been paid
out of the Met's Acquisitions Fund. They could have bought a lot of
Andy Warhol prints for that money. Or even a small collection of Pre-Raphaelite
paintings by Burne-Jones and others of his ilk.

What justifies this great expenditure—in the eyes of M. De
Montebello, his Curators, and his Board—is the fact that it is The Duccio
Madonna. It has not been shown in public for decades. Only recently did
the private owners decide to sell it, and the Met topped all bids.

Together with Giotto, Duccio is regarded as a principal
founder of Western EuropeanPainting. And this mysterious Madonna
was the last of his works still privately owned. Major museums outside Italy
which do have Duccios in their collections usually possess only fragments
of his great altarpiece in Siena: the Maestà.

Once owned by a Russian count, Grigorii Stroganoff—from
whom the panel now derives its name—the Madonna is one of the very few commissions
Duccio painted for a private patron. It was obviously intended as an icon
for personal devotions. In fact, there are very few Duccios surviving, aside
from the great work in Siena.

The Duccio Madonna is shown in a small chamber at the Met,
in the galleries of Medieval and Renaissance religious artworks. It is augmented
and contrasted with other Madonnas and religious paintings of the period to
place its genius in context. In mid-March, it will be removed from view for
further study, but it will ultimately return to the galleries.

But, if you want to see what $45,000,000 looks like
in very small—if splendid—format, rush off to the Met right now. [Loney]